Regional variation in paleomagnetic polarity of the Matachewan dyke swarm related to the Kapuskasing Structural Zone, Ontario

1990 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Bates ◽  
H. C. Halls

The 2.45 Ga Matachewan dykes from the Abitibi Subprovince of the Canadian Shield yield a mean paleomagnetic pole of 42°N, 58°E (α95 = 3°; N (sites) = 36), which is a composite of new and previously published data. Domains of paleomagnetic polarity are defined: an area of dykes predominantly of reversed magnetization in the Abitibi Subprovince contrasts with an area of exclusively normal dykes to the north. The polarity domains are separated by faults related to the 1.95 Ga uplift and exposure of the lower crust in the Kapuskasing Structural Zone and therefore reflect Hudsonian age tectonics in the Archean Superior Province.


SEG Discovery ◽  
2007 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Michel Gauthier ◽  
Sylvain Trépanier ◽  
Stephen Gardoll

ABSTRACT One hundred years after the first gold discoveries in the Abitibi subprovince, the Archean James Bay region to the north is experiencing a major exploration boom. Poor geologic coverage in this part of the northeastern Superior province has hindered the application of traditional Abitibi exploration criteria such as crustal-scale faults and “Timiskaming-type” sedimentary rocks. New area selection criteria are needed for successful greenfield exploration in this frontier region, and the use of steep metamorphic gradients is presented as a possible alternative. The statistical robustness of the metamorphic gradient area selection criterion was confirmed by using the curve of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) to estimate the correlation between metamorphic fronts and the distribution of known Abitibi orogenic gold producers. The criterion was then applied to the James Bay region during a first-pass craton-scale exploration program. This was part of the strategy that led to the discovery of the Eleonore multimillion-ounce gold deposit in 2004.



1989 ◽  
Vol 26 (9) ◽  
pp. 1778-1783 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. T. A. Symons

The Middle Proterozoic Lackner Lake Complex is a circular alkalic syenite–carbonatite stock with a diameter of about 5.5 km. It intrudes granulite-rank Archean gneisses in the Kapuskasing Structural Zone of the Wawa Subprovince in the Superior Province of the Canadian Shield. It adjoins the Ivanhoe Lake fault zone, which forms the boundary with the Abitibi Subprovince and is the probable locus of maximum motion between the subprovinces. Specimens from 18 sites in the complex were analyzed paleomagnetically by alternating-field and thermal demagnetization and by saturation isothermal remanence tests. Large, recent viscous remanence components required removal before a stable remanence with a mean direction of 305.4°, 64.1 °(α95 = 5.2°) was isolated. Its pole of 53.7°N, 156.5°W (dp = 6.7°, dm = 8.3°) indicates emplacement at 1108 ± 10 Ma during a brief normal interval in a predominantly reversed-polarity time. This study indicates that there has been no postintrusion tilting of the Kapuskasing Structural Zone and that postintrusion uplift by unroofing did not exceed about 8 km.



1977 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
pp. 1980-1990 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Donaldson ◽  
Richard W. Ojakangas

An Archean conglomerate in the North Spirit Lake area of northwestern Ontario contains rare orthoquartzite pebbles. Detailed study of these pebbles shows that mineralogically they are very mature, consisting of as much as 99.8 percent quartz and a heavy mineral suite of zircon, tourmaline, and apatite. Textures are typically bimodal, characterized by rounded sand-sized quartz grains set in a 'matrix-cement' of thoroughly recrystallized finer quartz grains. These orthoquartzite pebbles provide the first definite evidence for local tectonic stability of the Canadian Shield before deposition of the immature sedimentary rocks that form part of an Archean (>2.6 Ga) greenstone belt of the Superior Province.



1997 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 562-575 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew L. Manson ◽  
Henry C. Halls

Major reverse faults associated with the late compressional phase of the 1.1 Ga Midcontinent rift in the western Lake Superior region appear to cut across the rift at the eastern end of the lake and join with reverse faults on the eastern shoreline, defined on the basis of geological and potential field data. The continuation of the faults across eastern Lake Superior is inferred on evidence drawn from nearshore shipborne magnetic surveys together with new interpretations of published bathymetric and GLIMPCE aeromagnetic data. In the Archean Superior Province about 100 km east of Lake Superior, paleomagnetic and petrographic data from the 2.45 Ga Matachewan dyke swarm show that the Kapuskasing Zone, a narrow belt of uplifted crust, can be extended to within 50 km of the Lake Superior shoreline and has bounding reverse faults that are almost continuous with two faults of similar dip and sense of displacement that define the inversion of the Midcontinent rift in the central and western parts of the lake. Since the Kapuskasing Zone is dominantly a Paleoproterozoic (about 1.9 Ga) structure, the continuity suggests that the Lake Superior faults, whose last major activity was during the Grenville Orogen, may represent reactivation of much older faults that were part of an extended Kapuskasing structure. Within the Superior Province to the north and east of Lake Superior, published radiometric data on biotites suggest a series of alternating crustal blocks of varying tectonic stability, separated by northeast-trending faults. The Lake Superior segment of the Midcontinent rift developed within the most unstable block, bounded by the Gravel River fault to the northwest and the Ivanhoe Lake fault (the eastern margin of the Kapuskasing Zone) to the southeast.



1991 ◽  
Vol 28 (11) ◽  
pp. 1780-1796 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Bates ◽  
H. C. Halls

An extensive paleomagnetic study of the 2.45 Ga Matachewan dyke swarm of the North American Superior Province suggests that the interior of an Archean shield can undergo broad-scale distortion as a result of later (Proterozoic) orogenic activity around the craton margins. Data collected from over 300 sites, of which 137 are reported here for the first time, reveal that the dykes contain a dual-polarity primary remanence that varies across the swarm in both inclination and declination. These regional variations are statistically significant at the 95% confidence level, and cannot be attributed to remagnetization or to magnetic anisotropy. Inclination variation is probably due to real or apparent polar wander during the emplacement of the swarm, and may in part explain the declination variation as well. However, for dykes within and northwest of the Kapuskasing Structural Zone (KSZ) a positive correlation is found between regionally averaged values of declination and dyke trend. Here the dykes appear to have suffered differential rotations about vertical axes of up to 40° since emplacement. The Matachewan swarm radiates northwards from a broad focus situated approximately in northern Lake Huron but the trend of the western half of the swarm follows a broad Z-shaped pattern where it crosses the KSZ. Our data suggest that this changing trend is a secondary feature and that the western dykes, like their eastern counterparts, originally had a more uniform trend. This large-scale distortion of the western Matachewan swarm and Archean host rocks within and north of the KSZ is probably the result of broad-scale deformation during the Trans-Hudson Orogeny at about 1.95 Ga, coeval with uplift along the KSZ.



1991 ◽  
Vol 28 (11) ◽  
pp. 1873-1876 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. Bowins ◽  
L. M. Heaman

The southernmost remnants of Archean supracrustal and intrusive rocks in eastern Ontario are exposed through a window in the Early Proterozoic Huronian Supergroup near the town of Temagami. U–Pb zircon ages from this area indicate the presence of some of the oldest felsic magmatism so far discovered in this portion of the Superior Province. The Iceland Lake pluton (2736 ± 2 Ma) and a nearby rhyolite flow ([Formula: see text]) are contemporaneous, which establishes that at least some of the intrusive rocks in the region are synvolcanic and coeval with the oldest volcanic cycle. The youngest plutonic activity is the emplacement of a late rhyolite porphyry dike at 2687 ± 2 Ma, an age that is bracketed by the 2675–2700 Ma emplacement ages of late internal plutons found throughout the Abitibi Subprovince. The 2736 Ma dates, however, are older than the nearest portion of the exposed Abitibi, some 120 km to the north near Kirkland Lake.



2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Hamilton ◽  
Kenneth L. Buchan

Otish Gabbro sills intrude sedimentary rocks in the Otish Basin of the southeastern Superior Province. Here, deposition of Otish Supergroup sediments had previously been thought to be older than K–Ar and Sm–Nd ages of ca. 1750–1710 Ma for Otish Gabbro sills, and younger than ca. 2515–2500 Ma U–Pb ages of underlying Mistassini dykes. However, a much older U–Pb baddeleyite age of 2169.0 ± 1.4 Ma is presented here for an Otish sill, indicating that they are coeval with, and likely genetically related to, the giant 2172–2167 Ma Biscotasing dyke swarm to the southwest and (or) the Cramolet sills and Payne River dykes to the north. The new date also indicates that the age of the Otish Supergroup falls between ca. 2515 Ma and ca. 2169 Ma, only a little different from the ca. 2450–2217 Ma bracket for the Huronian Supergroup of the Southern Province, and is consistent with both supergroups spanning the oxy-atmo inversion. The Otish Supergroup could also be coeval with the Sakami Formation to the north, but is likely older than the Richmond Gulf Group on the east coast of Hudson Bay. Early paleomagnetic study of Otish sills yielded a remanence ∼20° from that expected for Biscotasing-aged intrusions. This may indicate that too few distinct sills were studied to average out paleosecular variation, that demagnetization techniques failed to fully remove unstable magnetization components, or that the remanence is a stable secondary overprint, perhaps acquired during a fluid event related to uranium mineralization at ca. 1720 Ma.



2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 361-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth L. Buchan ◽  
Anthony N. LeCheminant ◽  
Otto van Breemen

Lac de Gras diabase dykes trend north to NNE across the central Slave Province of the Canadian Shield. U–Pb baddeleyite ages of 2023 ± 2 and 2027 ± 4 Ma are interpreted as dyke emplacement ages. These ages are similar to that of the Booth River igneous complex, exposed along the margins of Kilohigok Basin near the northern end of the dyke swarm. Ten paleomagnetic sites (from four to six dykes) yield a mean paleopole at 11.8°N, 92.1°W (dm = 8.4°, dp = 6.0°). A positive baked contact test where a Lac de Gras dyke crosscuts a NE-trending Malley dyke demonstrates that this pole is primary. It represents the first key Paleoproterozoic pole from the Slave Province and, hence, the first Paleoproterozoic Slave pole suitable for reconstructing paleocontinents. Although a direct comparison is not available with precisely dated paleopoles of identical age from other Archean cratons, a comparison is made with a sequence of precisely dated poles from Superior Province dyke swarms, including those 40–50 million years older and 25 million years younger. It yields two options depending on the relative magnetic polarity assumed for data from the two cratons. The two cratons were either at similar latitudes, but not in their present relative orientations, when the swarms were emplaced, or separated in latitude by ∼40°–60°. In either case, they may have drifted separately or formed part of a single (super)continent that subsequently broke up with the two cratons drifting separately to attain their present configuration. Additional key paleopoles are required to distinguish between these interpretations.



2021 ◽  
pp. 105683
Author(s):  
Rupraj Biswasharma ◽  
Partha Roy ◽  
Imolemba ◽  
Imlisunup ◽  
Debajyoti Samanta ◽  
...  




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